The Curse of ‘Snow White’: All the Drama Around Disney’s Remake, Explained

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what’s the most cursed film of all? In 2025, at least, the answer might be Snow White. Disney’s $270 million musical remake of the animated classic, starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, is set to premiere on March 21—but it’s already been making headlines for three years. From MAGA backlash to ableism discourse to reported tension between its two stars, Snow White has been plagued by enough controversy to drive anyone to a poisoned apple. Here’s a timeline of everything that Snow White has had to endure on its tricky trip to the large screen.

October 31, 2016: On All Hallow’s Eve, The Hollywood Reporter announces that Disney is developing a live-action musical film adaptation of Snow White—the latest in a string of big-screen reimaginings kicked off by the studio’s critically and commercially successful redos of Cinderella and The Jungle Book. Director Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer and The Amazing Spiderman 2) will helm the film based on a script from screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson ( The Girl on the Train). Songwriting duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the future EGOT-winning team behind Dear Evan Hansen, La La Land, and The Greatest Showman, are tapped to write recent music for the film, which will be produced by Legally Blonde and Wicked superproducer Marc Platt. What could possibly go wrong?

June 22, 2021: But who will play the film’s titular role? None other than rising starlet Rachel Zegler. Zegler is cast months before the world is introduced to her as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story—a role that will soon win her a Golden Globe for best actress in musical or comedy. At the time, Deadline reports that “early footage of Zegler in West Side Story” is so robust that it clinched Zegler the leading role. “Her strength, intelligence, and optimism will become an integral part of rediscovering the joy in this classic Disney fairy tale,” says Webb in a statement.

June 2021: Zegler’s casting immediately causes uproar online. Right-leaning Disney fans, still smarting at the fact that Halle Bailey, a Black woman, has been tapped to play Ariel in The Little Mermaid remake, redirect their ire at Zegler, who is Latina. Conservatives rail against Disney for “going woke” and casting ethnically diverse women to play their beloved fictional princesses—a totally normal and not at all stupid thing to be mad at.

November 4, 2021: Gal Gadot, star of Wonder Woman and deliverer of the line “enough champagne to fill the Nile” in Death on the Nile, is cast to play the Evil Queen. There’s no drama here yet, but watch this space.

January 24, 2022: While appearing on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Peter Dinklage slams the reimagined Snow White. “There’s a lot of hypocrisy going on,” he says. “Literally no offense to anyone, but I was a little taken aback [when] they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White. But you’re still telling the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there. It makes no sense to me.”

Dinklage clarifies that he has nothing against Zegler—the two would go on to star together in The Hunger Games: Ballad of Song Birds and Snakes in 2023—but makes it exceedingly clear that he is offended by the very concept of remaking Snow White, a fairy tale that presents little people in a retrograde way. “You’re progressive in one way but then you’re still making that fucking backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together,” he says. “What the fuck are you doing, man?”

January 25, 2022: Disney quickly responds to Dinklage’s comments about the representation of dwarfism in Snow White. In a statement to Deadline, a Disney spokesperson says the following: “To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community. We look forward to sharing more as the film heads into production after a lengthy development period.”

January 31, 2022: In a Variety Q & A with Andrew Garfield, Zegler opens up about the backlash to her casting. “When it was announced, it was a huge thing that was trending on Twitter for days, because all of the people were angry,” she tells Garfield. “Never in a million years did I imagine that this would be a possibility for me. You don’t normally see Snow Whites that are of Latin descent, even though Snow White is really a big deal in Spanish-speaking countries. Blanca Nieves is a huge icon, whether you’re talking about the Disney cartoon or just different iterations and the Grimm fairy tale and all the stories that come with it. But you don’t particularly see people who look like me or are me playing roles like that.”